Advancement in Classic D&D linked on Biblyon Broadsides

“There are a few semi-secondary sources that give estimates for advancement rates—and it’s rather remarkable how widely they differ. This is even though they all date from a time post-OD&D-Supplement-I, when in they’re all using basically the same monster XP chart and treasure tables.”

When I wrote Experience and Advancement in Role-Playing Games, I focused on the mechanical elements of character advancement. That says nothing about the player perspective of how characters advance.

In his latest blog post, Delta collects three statements—two from actual rulebooks—about how quickly Gygax, Holmes, and Moldvay each expected players to see their characters go up in level. Advancement from first to second level, for example, varies between 2-½ adventures (Moldvay) to 9 adventures (Holmes). That’s a pretty big difference.

These differences will reflect more than just a difference in each writer’s vision of how quickly players should see their characters advance. They’re going to reflect different visions about all sorts of aspects of early gaming culture: how often players gamed, how long each session took, even what the definition of an adventure was vs. what a session was!